They Turn Grass
pp. 68-69 · Read in the full issue
In the NG Highlands— They Turn Grass lands into Forests
From Our Own Correspondent EVER since the war there have been grave warnings and pessimistic predictions that very soon the Highlands of New Guinea would be without timber of any kind.
Visiting experts (some who made only brief inspections and some who have not made even a post-war visit) have blamed the steel axe, the settlers and the Administra tion. Most of them are wide of the mark.
The fact is that deforestation is a disease which has already been arrested, but it began before any European or steel axe was seen in these parts. It was the natural consequence of tribal fighting and irresponsible hunting, and both of these pastimes have virtually ceased, thanks to a firm application of law and or d e r—particularly in the Eastern Highlands where one puff of smoke brings a hundred in formers to the nearest patrol officer.
The natives themselves are now tree-conscious and an axe wound in a tree is regarded by the Dis
trict Commissioner at Goroka as almost as bad as murder.
The steel axe may enable a native to clear a garden quicker but test checks have shown that the areas cleared under the normal practice of shifting agriculture are not neces sarily more extensive because the
axes are made of steel.
In the densely populated Chimbu. sub-District Administration policy and education have already clothed with trees hillsides which pre-war photographs showed as barren and eroded. Every “old” garden in Chimbu now carries hundreds of
young casuarinas. And firewood is obtained by lopping branches and not by cutting trees.
The most denuded areas are the Goroka and Bena Bena grasslands and the Asaro valley below Goroka airfield. It is in this area that each wet season “Operation Tree Dis tribution” gets under way. Already this year, plans are well advanced and each week since the beginning of September boxes of pine and other seedlings are coming in from the Forestry Department’s Nursery at Lae. The trees are rushed to the holding nursery at Goroka, where the officer in charge of the Highland Labour Pool, Mr. Norm.
Mullins, works overtime. He is care taker and chief planter of trees.
When the wet season sets in, streams of natives collect the seed lings and the Assistant District Officer takes them out four times a week to the Administration Meet ing Centres where they are care fully allocated to those most in need.
European farmers are also plant ing trees and with such co-opera tion it is easy to understood how the Administration, the coffee farmers and the natives have already planted an estimated 900,000 trees in the Eastern Highlands Dis trict.
This season the target is one million before 30th June, 1955, and within 5 years the hillsides now be ing contoured by natives should carry a wealth of timber.
Around Goroka itself the plant ing scheme should provide not only a future stand of commercial trees but a place of great beauty which will be a fitting memorial to those who have quietly got something done while the experts continue to urge a cessation of European settlement and refuse to believe the facts now unfolding.